Adobe Cancels Project ROME

A few weeks ago, Adobe Labs announced Project ROME--an experimental desktop and internet publishing solution aimed at bringing an affordable software-as-a-service tool set to the education market in a easy to install package built on the backbone of Adobe Air. Unfortunately, after a short testing cycle, the powers that be at Adobe have opted to put the kibosh on future development of the application.

Adobe's Public relations representatives issued a brief statement late yesterday explaining that Project Rome came to an end after the project team "...evaluated customer input, and weighed this product initiative against other projects currently in development, we made the difficult decision to stop development on Project ROME in order to focus resources on delivering tablet applications, which we believe will have significant impact on creative workflows."

While we're sad to see that the possible benefits for educators that could have been realized through the release of Project ROME will never come to fruition, we have to admit that we're more than a little stoked to hear that Adobe is indeed working hard on delivering tablet applications to us, and can't wait to see what they're cooking up.

In the meantime, Project ROME is available for download to anyone interested in taking the application for a spin. Unsurprisingly, it will not be receiving any future updates.

Comment

It was still Flash. The future of online education is probably stuck with Flash for the near-term. Once html 5 and related tech is available in tools we can use, things could be much better for us folks who develop online educational material. For now, we're stuck with Flash.

I, and a group of fellow employees at work, are meeting with two Apple engineers tomorrow to talk about the iPad and online education. Should be fun.